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Book I Chapter 48

7 · ⟨Aëtius⟩: intellect and soul

Pythagoras, Anaxagoras, Plato, Xenocrates, and Cleanthes hold that intellect enters from outside.

Parmenides, Empedocles, and Democritus hold that intellect and soul are the same; on their account, no living creature would be irrational in the strict sense.¹²⁴³

8.1 · Iamblichus: the development of reason

From Iamblichus, from On the Soul.

Again, then, concerning intellect and all the soul’s higher powers, the Stoics say that reason is not implanted at once, but is assembled later from perceptions and impressions, at about fourteen years of age. The followers of Plato and Pythagoras, however, say that reason is present even in the newborn, though it is obscured by external things and does not exercise its proper activity, but lies quiet.¹²⁴⁴

8.2 · Two intellects in Peripatetic accounts

Now, then, [concerning intellect,] many Peripatetics posit one intellect arising from seed and from nature, as sprouting immediately from the first generation. They say that another, separable and summoned from outside, arrives very late, when the potential intellect has reached completion and is suitably disposed to participate in actual thinking.¹²⁴⁵

8.3 · Intellect entering with the soul

Many of the Platonists themselves also bring intellect in together with soul at its first entrance into the body, and hold that soul and intellect are not distinct from one another at all.¹²⁴⁶

1243.Wachsmuth supplies the attribution Aëtius IV.5.11-12 (Diels, p. 392). These are reports grouped under names, not identified verbatim quotations from the philosophers. “From outside” translates thyrathen, literally “from beyond the door.” The conclusion about irrational creatures follows from the reported identification of intellect and soul; it is qualified by kyriōs, “in the strict sense.”

1244.The contrast is between the development of reason out of perceptual experience and a reason already present but inactive. Phantasiai in the Stoic report are “impressions”; the same word-family supplied “imagination” in Porphyry’s different account. The bracketed en is rejected in the Greek, so the English renders the remaining instrumental dative as “by external things.” The age is part of Iamblichus’s report, not a modern developmental claim.

1245.The text distinguishes a naturally developing intellect from a separable one. The printed epikaloumenon, “summoned,” is marked as doubtful in the apparatus; Usener proposed epeisagomenon, “brought in afterward,” but Wachsmuth does not adopt it. The brackets preserve the rejected topic phrase and, in Greek, the redundant article ton. “Potential” and “actual” render the contrast between dynamis and energeia.

1246.The account distinguishes views within the Platonic tradition rather than attributing one position to every Platonist. The final infinitive construction is rendered with “hold” supplied in English. This closes chapter 48; chapter 49, “On the Soul,” begins on the same printed page.